360 videos on Quest 3 with Unity
Hey everyone, I'm working on a project that involves watching 360 videos using Unity, specifically targeting Quest 3. I'm looking for advice on the best practices for creating, encoding, and implementing these videos to ensure optimal performance and quality. Here are some specific questions: Video Creation: What are the recommended specifications (resolution, frame rate, etc.) for 360 videos that will be used in VR? Is there any specific camera that you would suggest (budget is not a problem at this point of the project - just checking what can be done) Implementation in Unity: What are the best practices for integrating 360 videos into a Unity project? Do you recommend specific plugins or assets? I've heard about AVPro Video and Unity's VideoPlayer, but I'm curious about which works best with Quest 3 (I'd rather use the Quest 3 SDK if there is anything to help...) General Tips: Any additional advice or resources you could share would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance for your help!959Views0likes0Comments
360 video player stuttering after OS update
A couple of years ago I developed an app made for Quest 2, which showed some high quality 360 videos. Together with one of the latest OS updates, came some sort of graphical glitch (mainly stuttering). Specifically, it appears while the 360 videos are playing. The videos are played with a VideoPlayer that renders them on a render texture in the correct resolution. This specific render texture is used as texture for a skybox material I added to the scene. The videos are 8192x4096 and follow the Meta guidelines . I'm currently working with Unity 2022.3.3f1 , but I'm updating it soon to the latest LTS. I'm also using the settings as suggested by the Oculus Integration Plugin. Given that the issue started showing up after a Meta software update, my best guess would be that I need to update something in the quality settings, but I haven't found any solution yet. I also tried to build an older version of my app, from a year ago, when there was no stuttering, but the issue now appears also in that version. I'll be happy to share any further information and thanks in advance for the help!1.1KViews2likes0Comments360 Content on the Overlay Layer
Note to all developers looking to use the overlay layer to render 360 content. There are issues within the Oculus overlay implementation which makes 360 content not a viable option. The overlay layer is rendering straight to the eyebuffer(screen) and needs special care to do so. The edges of an overlay layer tend to have a thin dark outline which is usually not an issue with a quad or cylinder as they can be easily masked by darker backgrounds. Now to render 360 content with the overlay layer, you need to use a equirect layer. The equirect overaly shapes render 360 video/images clear and sharp however there is a massive issue making the equirect option unusable. The edges of the overlay layer still produce a small black line which happens to be on the back side of the sphere. Looking forward is just fine however once you turn around, the black line is always at the back of the video. The line is very thin but extremely noticeable. A strange aspect of the black line is that it is extremely tiny at the poles of the sphere but it is its thickest at the equator, though it is still very thin. I've reproduced this with 4k mono video and stereo video and 360 images. It happens with AVPro, Unity's video player and still image textures. I've primarily tested this with the latest oculus utilities 12/1.44 and Unity 2018.4.9 and 2019.2.3. In my research I also reproduced it on older version of oculus utilities which produced similar results with early versions producing an even thicker line. I am not the only developer who has come across this issue. I would post links to these discussions however, I "have to be around for a little while longer before you can post links". They can be found by searching "overlay" in the forum. In addition, John Carmack replied to a twitter thread about this on July 10th, of 2018, however his responses did address the real issue. In addition to these posts, I have privately spoken to other developers who have had the same exact issue and ended up having to ditch the overlay layer all together to properly render 360 content. I was met with the same fate as my counterparts. I have concluded that it is not possible to properly render 360 content on the oculus overlay layer. Other interesting tidbits i've found about the equirect overlay layers: Oculus offers an example scene with the equirect overlay layer but it is only a 180 video. The entire back half of the sphere is black so the black line not visible. I inserted my own 360 content into this demo scene and switched its custom video player script to 360 from 180 and of course, the black line was there. Oculus does not actually give a demo of the 360 content rendering on the overlay layer. I have personally never seen a single instance of any 360 content rendering on the overlay layer without the black line(within unity). In addition oculus does not actually provide an example of 360 content rendering on the overlay layer, though they have a demo for the much less utilized 180 video. I believe oculus did not deliver any demo scenes with 360 content because they know it doesn't work. The part that I've found troubling is that within the Oculus Go/Quest Overlay documentation it states, "Equirect layers are single textures that are wrapped into a sphere and projected to surround the user’s view. Most commonly used for 360/180 video playback". I was sure that this meant that it was proven and tested to work for 360 content. If it wasn't obvious by the length and detail of this post, i've wasted many hours trying to get this working because of the documentation stated that it works. I hope that any future developers happen to find this post before they go down the same path as I did. If this is correct, I also hope that oculus removes the part about 360 videos from their overlay documentation as it simply is not correct. If someone can prove me wrong, please do.1.8KViews1like3Comments
Switching between monoscopic video to stereoscopic video
Hi, I wanted to know if there was a possibilty to switch between a monoscopic video to a stereoscopic video without having to use both version in your project? The idea would be to change the right (or left) view to the other one. I am working in Unity 5.3 to deploy an app for Oculus Go. Currently I have my 360° video that is displayed through the skybox material with a render texture and I know that I may need to change those assets through script but I don't know how to turn the same video from stereo to mono. Thanks for your help!563Views0likes0Comments
OVROverlay render depth conflict with Pixvana video player
Hello! I'm running into an issue using the OVROverlay with Gear VR. The OVROverlay works fine at first, as expected, but it seems that after playing a video in Pixvana at runtime, going back to the OVROverlay video is rendered in the correct place but seems like it's at the wrong depth. It looks closer than the plane actually is. It seems like the Pixvana stuff is accessing Oculus render textures and other magic things so I'm wondering if there's a conflict somehow. Looking at OVROverlay, it's not quite clear to me how it determines what depth(distance) to render the texture at. Is it possible to reset this distance or force it to update to the correct position of the plane its being rendered to? Any ideas of what the problem my be? Thanks. Peace!798Views0likes1Comment
Overheating issue in app development
I am facing an issue of overheating on simply playing a 360 video in Unity with basic pause/unpause UI and audios. It just lets video play for about 2 to 3 times. We target it to be played at least 6 to 7 times. Its just a 3:33 mins video. with codec h264. (265 is not supported in Unity VideoPlayer). I am using Unity 5.6.1 and testing in Samsung Gear VR. Are there any oculus settings I am missing? Please, anyone who can help me with this? Thanks in advance.415Views0likes0Comments
3D Audio from video file spatialization
Hello, I am working on a 360 video GearVR app. I'm using Movie Player Sample from Oculus sample framework. I was wondering if there is a way to assign audio from video to Unity's audio source. I am trying to make use of Oculus spatializer. I am really not sure how to proceed with this. Thanks!1.2KViews0likes4Comments[SOLVED] Oculus Home & EasyMovieTexture plugin
Hi, I'm working on GearVR app which plays a 360 video (animated logo) in startup (loading) scene. When I launch the app from Oculus Home I always get UNKNOWN_MEDIA_ERROR returned by EasyMovieTexture, which of course prevents video from playing. The same happens if I launch the app from Oculus Android app while Oculus Home is running in the background. Video plays just fine when Oculus Home is not running. Oculus Home uses AVPro for video playback if I'm not mistaken (I've seen some messages in ADB console). Could it be that these two plugins are "fighting" with eachother?1.1KViews0likes1Comment
360 video with spatial audio in Unity
Hi everyone, Is anyone here familiar with integrating a 360 video in Unity with ambisonic or 5.0 audio? I know that you would need to place the video on a sphere using a 3rd party movie texture plugin, but I'm not sure if I would need to use TBE's plugin in Unity or another plugin to spatialize the audio. I have used milkVR for a 360 video with a 5.1 mix, but would like more control over distance and perspective. Any help or insight on a workflow would be appreciated. Thanks!1.4KViews0likes1Comment
